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lies in the sea. His craggy face and calloused hands attest to that.
The house he shares with his wife, Hiroko, sits high above the Santa
Barbara Harbor; their master bedroom features a view of the Sea Landing
where the Condor is berthed.
A College dropout
Fred (just Fred, not Frederick) Michael Benko was born in Barberton,
Ohio on July 6, 1939; he turned 72 this year. His stepfather (he never
knew his biological father) was a tire builder for BF Goodrich; during
World War II, Fred’s mother worked in a rubber factory in Akron, making
barrage balloons. After the war, she earned a teaching degree and taught
school for a number of years before retiring.
In 1957, Fred graduated Ellet High, where he “belonged to about
every organization there is,” spent one semester at Akron University, and
passed up the opportunity to attend Harvard, where he was offered a $350
per semester scholarship. He did attend Wooster College, which had a
program that could have led to an MIT degree in engineering; his college
career was short-lived, however.
“I was a good student,” Fred explains, as we sit on his patio
overlooking Santa Barbara Harbor and the Channel Islands. “But, I was
not a very good citizen. I got in quite a bit of trouble when I got out on
my own, living on campus.”
What kind of trouble? I wondered.
“Mostly mischief,” Fred answers. “We’d set firecrackers up around
the outside of the chapel when they were having the chorus or something;
we’d put cigarettes out on them as a timer, and we’d run across the street
and wait.
“One of our stunts even made the newspaper,” he laughs. “I
lived on campus and I think there were ten
of us in there, ten guys. My grandpa had
given me his ‘48 Ford and it was parked outside. We heard this ruckus
and looked out, and there was this little old lady – Mrs. Angfang – pacing
back and forth and [yelling] that the bumper of my car had intruded
into the sidewalk slightly. And she’s going back and forth. So we thought,
‘Well, why don’t we play a trick on Mrs. Angfang?’ So, we called her and
told her we’re from the water department and we’re going to have to shut
off the water for the next couple of days, so it would be a good idea if she’d
fill up her bathtub and pots and pans. That was the beginning. And then
this thing kept going on and on and on.”
After a few similar shenanigans, a judge advised Fred that it would
be a good idea if he joined the military. He took the judge’s advice and
enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 1959.
“The Marine Corps saved my life,” Fred admits. “It really turned
me around; made a citizen out of me. I’ve seen that happen to so many
different people.”
After boot camp, Fred was sent to Lakehurst, New Jersey to be
trained as a meteorologist.
“They used us at that time as forward observers. If we were ‘in-
country,’ as they say, we were the ones that dropped in ahead of the
invasion and would bring in the helicopters if there was a vertical
envelopment, or the landing craft if they were hitting the beaches. We’d
give them the wind and weather, that sort of thing.”
Fred was stationed in Viegas, Puerto Rico when the Bay of Pigs
invasion was supposed to take place.
“We were ready to go, and Kennedy pulled us back. Poor guys on the
beaches there at the Bay of Pigs got cut to pieces by the Soviet tanks. And
we had promised them we would be there. Cuba’s history,” Fred surmises,
“would have been different if we had gone in, that’s for sure.”
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